Et tu iPhone?

What my iPhone looked like when it was alive

My frustrations with the iPhone as a tool for tracking activities using GPS were further aggravated yesterday when I finished my run but could not shut off my tracking app. The process of unlocking the iPhone was difficult enough with the glare of the sun obscuring my view but when I finally got to the application it appeared to have stopped on its own. It turned out that it didn't stop and later, when I went to relaunch the app, I saw that it had continued to run and so any hopes of getting an accurate accounting of my race speed and distance were gone forever. Happily the race used timing chips because my backup, the Garmin 50, was over counting distance by about 5%.

We're on vacation this week and we decided to go for a hike at Cold Spring Harbor. It's a great trail, very rugged with lots of elevation. I turned on my iPhone, switched to AllSport GPS and selected "Hike" but the GPS would not acquire. I pushed the power button on the iPhone and did a soft shut down hoping that after rebooting it would do a better job with GPS. When I hit the power button to restart nothing happened. I tried holding it down for different lengths of time but that resulted in nothing but the same blank screen. No power. We headed home after the hike (which was fun) but I had my mind a little too much on my iPhone problem. I went online to see if this was a known problem (it is) but the remedy they suggested, holding down both the Power and Home buttons, did not restore the unit. I plugged it into wall power, connected it to my iMac, tried to restart in every combination, but nothing is bringing this iPhone back to life.

A call into my company's IT service desk has started an investigation but I don't hold out too much hope that I'll have a working device this week while on vacation. My wife will probably be happy because I tend to check business email two or three hundred times a day (an exaggeration but just barely). If that was my only use I could easily work around it but I've come to depend on my iPhone for so much more now. I'll recalibrate the Garmin for my runs this week and table the GPS apps until this is resolved. We are thinking about looking for trail shoes for my wife a little later today and although I love my NB 460's, yesterday's experience is making me think I also need a new, higher end pair for long runs. While we're out I may take a look at pricing on the Garmin 405's although everything I'm reading about them makes me worry that I won't get much more accuracy than on the iPhone. Maybe I should take a break from technology for a day. It certainly hasn't helped much lately.

The Dirty Sock 10K is done - we sure had fun

( L-R) DaveADK, AG, Emerging Runner, Firefreak

Dirty Sock 10K Trail Run: 59:22 overall, 9:35 pace

It was touch and go with the weather this weekend and we were concerned that we'd be hit with thunderstorms that would render Belmont Lake Park a giant mud puddle. Adventure Girl came out on Saturday and, since the rain had held, we did a few miles at Stillwell to end our tapers. After a light dinner we ran some with my daughter and then we turned our attention to the race: the Babylon Village Classic Dirty Sock 10K. By evening we saw that the 40% chance of precipitation had been downgraded to 5% and went to sleep with high hopes of a dry course.

Happily that was the case for the most part and we arrived at the race location under clear skies. It was humid, to be sure, but the temperature was a reasonable 74 degrees. As we waited for the race to begin we noticed bagpipers playing near the entrance to the trails and lots of very fit runners stretching and preparing for the run. After picking up our race shirts and numbers my wife, kids, AG and I made our way up the trail to scope out the starting line. AG and I did a light run up the path to warm up and we found DaveADK, a Runner's World Loop friend who I ran with a couple of weeks ago. We found our place at the starting line and happily noted that the race organizers set things up to track the participant's actual start from the line. Every other race I've run has had a common start with the only measurement being total elapsed time. With a small field of runners it's not that critical to capture exact start because it's usually no more than ten seconds after the gun but this race had 555 finishers so it took almost a minute to cross the starting line.

AG, Dave and I started together and Dave was the first to break off ahead of us. AG stuck with me for the first mile and then took off to run her race. I probably cost her 30 to 50 seconds in overall race time but she graciously said that starting a little slower had helped her down the line. The course is relatively flat and the trail was mostly dry but there were a few wide puddles that required some maneuvering. I really started feeling the humidity as we made our way past mile 2 but I was determined to maintain a mid 9:00 pace for as much of the run as I could. I felt like I was doing pretty well until I saw the eventual winners pass us in the other direction about 20 minutes into the race. The guy next to me said, "well there goes my first place finish!" By the time I reached the north lake I felt fine about doing the remaining 3.2 miles but when I saw the path around the lake we needed to follow for the turnaround it made me think the worst was yet to come. The pack had thinned by that point and I found myself being passed and passing the same group of people. Miles three through five went by reasonably quickly but the last 1.2 miles seemed endless.

Once I heard the announcer calling the names of the runners as they crossed the finish line I knew I was close to the end and I put as much effort into my finish as I could. I saw AG standing near the trail exit and she cheered me as I passed. I crossed the line and saw my wife and kids right there and I felt great, tired, dizzy and hot as I walked off the remaining energy. I was feeling very light headed and cooled down with water and watermelon. I then met Firefreak, another Runner's World Loop friend. He was there with his girlfriend and had finished well ahead of me. I was happy to see him and Dave at the race, it made me feel great about the community of runners and the fact that there are some really good people in the runner blog community. I also like that they both encouraged me to finally buy a Garmin 405. My iPhone tracking application failed miserably today.

My family and AG went out (after some very needed showers) to a great lunch place in Bay Shore and we spent the afternoon in Port Jefferson before putting AG on the ferry and heading home. I was pleased to have maintained a 9:35 pace on what we heard was a tougher run than last year. It was my first 10K, first trail race and my first race with AG. My wife was an incredible race team manager and my kids were up at 5:30 AM with no complaints then or throughout the day. I completed one of my 2009 goals: complete at least four races this year. I'm on vacation this week and I feel great. I think I'll sleep well tonight.

Looking for some racing strategy

An emergingrunner.com reader sent me a note asking if anyone had blogged about strategies for the Dirty Sock 10K race (this Sunday, August 23) or the Great Cow 10K (Saturday, September 26). I'm running on Sunday and though I'm familiar with the course, having run it once already, it would be helpful to hear from others who have actually raced it. Similarly, the Great Cow Harbor 10K, in Northport, NY, is monster of a race and will include many elite runners.

If anyone has already run these races and wants to share perspective about the course please send some comments to this blog.

Good running apps can be worth the money

I'll give it to the folks at Trimble Outdoors (creator of AllSport GPS) in terms of helping users understand their product. I'd mentioned to them that the accuracy and rest detection with the AllSport GPS app were off the mark and they gave me some good feedback (rest detection can be turned off) and told me that are working to improve some other features. I know it's funny to say this but, even with some of the issues I've encountered, but I'm glad they charge $10 for the app. These utilities are valuable to runners and to other athletes who wish to track their performance. These are applications that should be differentiated from lesser apps that cost far less or are free. Software companies will only invest in optimizing applications if there's a real opportunity to monetize the result. In a world of free or $0.99 iPhone apps there exists great choice but little practical value. I like MotionX a lot, it's priced low for what it offers (but it's not $0.99 either) and it does as good a job as it can with the limits of the iPhone and GPS.

There's a lot more functionality that can be added to these applications to benefit the runner. The accelerometer within the iPhone can be better leveraged to help gauge effort. The GPS can sync with a database of prior runs to provide comparisons to past performance. I have not used Running Gypsy but I noticed it has a feature for automatically capturing 1 mile splits. Why don't they all do that? There are many things I'd like to know when I'm running like temperature, humidity and real time elevation. I have a terrible time reading the display while I'm running due to factors like sun reflections, screen locking and angle of the unit. I'd like to have the option of listening to my metrics in real-time and on demand. As the iPhone and other mobile devices add more capabilities related to user needs and actions it can get very interesting. In the meantime I struggle a bit with the fact that the best apps are still limited by the technologies they need to leverage. I still think about the Garmin GPS watches and wonder why, with the same GPS tracking signal, they would be more accurate than an iPhone.

AllSport GPS thinks I'm a slacker

I'm in taper mode as I move closer to Sunday's race and I'm also experiencing some discomfort with the outside toes on both feet. I decided that I would get a run in today but take it easier than I normally would. I brought along my iPhone and selected the AllSport GPS app to track my run and took the Garmin 50 along as well. I now have five GPS apps on the iPhone: Allsport and MotionX (paid apps) plus iMapMyRun, Run Keeper Free and RunGypsy (free apps) and they all capture data about run speed and distance. What separates these apps is what else they track and how they report data. The free apps generally give you pace and distance information and some rudimentary resources to store that data. The paid apps have lots of features, MotionX really provides a lot of utilities for the running experience including compass, mapping and music integration. AllSport generates an excellent report that shows many metrics including elevation (as does MotionX) and both paid apps export KMZ and GPX files that overlay on Google Earth.

The thing that these apps all have in common (though I have not yet tried RunGypsy) is a dependence on the iPhone's GPS service which has proven lacking. Each time I have captured a run with one of these apps I've seen differences between what's reported and what was actually run. My baseline is Google Earth where I can trace my route to the inch and compare it to the route created by the GPS apps. This morning I verified on Google that I covered 2.15 miles and the Garmin confirmed that. The AllSport app reported that I ran 1.98 miles and I can understand why after reviewing the route it displayed. There seemed to be some weak links from the signal (that were shown as yellow lines on the map) and the lines veered off the road enough to explain the shorter distance. What puzzles me is AllSport's insistence that I rested for 7:17 of my run.

Now I know I wasn't pushing too hard today (my actual pace was 9:39) but I don't recall resting during the run. It's not clear if that was a result of a weak signal or if AllSport was judging me for not picking up the pace (yes, I'm kidding). I sent them a note asking about it and I expect that I'll hear back. To their credit they've been good about responding to my questions. I like this app a lot but I want to rely on it and at this point I don't think I can. I'll try to use it on Sunday so I can capture the route but I'll have my Garmin 50 along to keep things honest.

Dirty Sock 10K - progress and firsts

As I consider my race this Sunday I'm thinking about my running progress over the last year. It was just about a year ago when I saw the results from my annual physical and realized that I needed to make a fundamental change in my diet and activity. I am fortunate that changing my eating habits was a fairly easy effort. I had always eaten well but my meals were too large and I had too much sugar in my diet. I simply changed expectations about portion sizes and planned everything I would eat during and after a meal. The activity part was the bigger challenge because, with the exception of playing Wii with my kids on occasion, I rarely did anything close to exercise. I had always been an active person but in the past few years I'd become fairly sedentary. Rather than lace up a pair of running shoes and hit the pavement I understood that I needed to manage expectations for activity as well. My prior foray into running a decade earlier taught me to take a careful approach to fitness.

Looking back at my pace times last September I can see where I began to transition from primarily walking to primarily running. I can also see how my weight declined through September from its August high and I know that less weight led to a better experiences on the road and treadmill. I'll consider October 1st as the start of my return as a runner and I'm reflecting upon how, eleven months later, I'll be running in a 10K race. This race will be the fourth competition I've entered in the past five months. Eleven months ago it would have seemed unlikely that I would be able to do this run. I was considering distances over a mile a great success and when I started The Emerging Runner in November my best continuous distance was only 2.6 miles. So Sunday's race has a few firsts: My first 10K race, my first trail race and my first race with my running partner, Adventure Girl. My wife and kids are excited to be going there although an 8:00 AM start will mean a very early morning for everyone.

I don't really know how I'll do in this race. I ran the course at a modest pace a couple of weekends ago and was fairly spent after that. Races do supply a lot of energy and I won't be doing as much talking so I think I'll do better than I did that day. At least I hope I do. 6.2 miles is still an intimidating distance but its a length I've run before. I love the trails and I'll appreciate the shelter from the sun. I hope the weather is clear of rain leading up to the race because a muddy trail would add a lot to the effort. It really doesn't matter though, progress has been made.

Zoot suited - a shopping story

I was out after lunch yesterday in the mid-town heat so I stopped into City Sports to cool off a bit. Okay, it was very hot outside but I don't really need an excuse to stop into that store. What I like about City Sports is that, while they stock plenty of gear for other sports, they have a big running section that greets you right as you walk in. Since most of my athletic wear shopping takes place in the suburbs at Sports Authority, Dick's and Target (their Champion running stuff is a very good value for the price) or in private running stores that have less selection and (understandably) higher markups I appreciate the expanse and brand diversity at City. The only other place I've seen such choice is Paragon in Union Square but City Sports is just two blocks away!

My intention was not to buy anything during that visit. I really like looking at running gear and it's interesting to see brands like Sugoi and Craft displayed along with apparel from Mizuno, Brooks, Pearl Izumi plus the more common suppliers. One brand that caught my eye a few months ago is Zoot, a company that makes performance apparel primarily for triathletes. Hanging seductively in their section has been an Ultra Tech Tee that is so sheer that it almost doesn't exist. I imagined that this would be the perfect running shirt - light as a feather but with venting, sun protection and wicking capabilities. The only reason I never bought it was its sizable cost that I felt was just too high a price to pay for an item that is likely to be outweighed by a honey bee. As I looked at the racks I noticed signs indicating that a clearance sale was going on and I gravitated to the Zoot section only to see that this shirt was marked down quite a bit. Even so I hesitated to buy it, I probably have six or seven running shirts already and two, my Nike Sphere and Adidas adiZero shirts, are excellent for competition. I then thought about what my wife would say if she was standing there: "Go ahead, you've been looking for an excuse to get it. If it was me you'd say to buy it." So I did.

I'm glad I did. I remember reading a comment on my Runner's World blog from someone who said he buys a new shirt for every race. That sounds about right but I think I'm done for now. I invested in some good cold weather gear last year and now I'm fully equipped. Of course my Brooks running shoes are almost five months old so maybe its time to start thinking about their replacement...

My BH Fitness problem child

Although we have both an elliptical machine and a treadmill I very rarely use either. Since I've started running outdoors before work I have completely stopped using the treadmill and I've been using the elliptical sparingly, perhaps once a week, as a low impact alternative to a daily run. I love the idea of the elliptical, especially the fact that, unlike the treadmill, I can completely control the experience. The treadmill is loud and cacophonous and though I use the safety tether I'm always conscious of the possibility that a slight misstep will turn into a serious injury. I've been unbelievably fortunate to have had such a long string of early mornings without rain that would force me indoors.

The elliptical is self powered and far less dangerous and it theoretically helps build upper arm strength with a motion similar to cross country skiing. I'm not sure if that's true or not but I'd like to believe it. The biggest problem I have with my elliptical is the quality of the unit itself. We spent some time selecting a machine. I did my due diligence and really liked a Schwinn model we'd tried at Dick's but a visit to Fitness Showrooms seduced me into purchasing the "high end" BH Fitness X1 that was on sale for about the same price. From the beginning the X1 proved problematic. I wrote about the fact that the HRM just didn't work and after three attempts to replace it I just gave up. The display itself was replaced three times and is still off center. The machine makes a loud banging-clicking sound that the Showroom Fitness tech could not fix. Not a surprise since the last time the display was replaced my wife needed to point out to him that the upper assembly was installed backwards. Now the machine is beginning to make different noises as though some key connection points are becoming loose. Rather than call the unqualified tech who will likely make it worse and then charge me because it's no longer under warranty, I'll see if I can resolve it myself.

In the meantime my wife uses the elliptical every other day and doesn't complain. I used it this morning and did a few miles that felt like a decent workout. If I had to do it over I would have bought that Schwinn. But I'll live with the BH Fitness, at least until it falls apart under me.

Road runner

I wracked up some decent mileage over the last three days averaging about 4.5 miles per run. Two of these runs were a bit harder because of the heat, humidity and hill challenges. Today I decided to be kind to myself and go out early through the neighborhood and enjoy the mostly flat topography without thinking too much about pace. I started out feeling energetic and wondered how long it would be until the first feelings of fatigue would set in. After almost a year I still hit the wall around 3-4 miles but I always manage to keep going. Most of my weekend runs range between 3.1 and 6 miles although I have run longer than that on occasion. Of course 4.5 miles on a soft trail surface with tricky switchbacks and sharp elevations is not the same as running a flat road course of the same distance. I felt good about all three runs I've competed since Friday.

Today was about putting some additional distance in and I planned to follow a straightforward course that took me around neighborhood #2 and looped around my main neighborhood along the outside roads. For the most part this was a simple flat run but at the 33 minute mark I faced the big hill on Jericho Turnpike that increases elevation by about 25 feet over a tenth of a mile or so. For some reason this hill never seems as bad when running it as it does when viewed from the road and I managed to get up and over without a problem. I used the AllSport GPS app on my iPhone today and it worked well but, like MotionX, iMapMyRun and Runkeeper, it suffers from the lack of precision with GPS. The Allsport did come within 1% of my actual distance of 4.64 miles (the Garmin did slightly better than Allsport) when compared to a hand mapped route on Google Earth. The Allsport interface is quite nice though and their website provides some nice mapping and metrics of your activities. Almost everything you'd want for $10 except accuracy! One feature it lacks is the capability to play the iPod app while tracking your run. MotionX, at $2.99, is a better choice in that case.

This weekend has been fun with friends and lots of good meals that led to some over indulgence. I'll take today as a reset to get back to my rational eating habits. My son and I are going to see the G.I. Joe movie today so my discipline will be tested by the bucket of popcorn he will invariably request. Well I guess when you're training there is no such thing as bad carbs.

Trail trial

Despite feeling a bit fatigued from yesterday's bridle trail run in Central Park I ventured over to Stillwell Woods Preserve for a little more training for next week's race. When I arrived there were tents set up at the trail head and I saw lots of mountain bikes and trailers. I walked over and asked if there was a bike race today but they said the event was a demo by our local bike place, Bicycle Planet. They were going to show some riding techniques and then provide people a chance to take bikes out on the trail. I said I was relieved because I didn't want to deal with 100 mountain bikers racing through the paths as I ran. One of the guys suggested that I try biking today instead of running but I really needed to train. As I stood at the beginning of the trail another runner came by and asked me what was going on and I told him what I knew. He smiled and said we'd best get on the trail before we get mowed down by test drivers.

Every time I've run Stillwell I've intended to cover the wide northeastern set of trails but the trail diversity is confusing when you're running and it's often hard to know just exactly where you are. I used the compass function on MotionX and followed the trails that led east and north. Some of it looked familiar and some was definitely new discovery. There are some formidably treacherous segments within these trails and some seem to go up forever (see above photo that I took after reaching the top of one). Others go down a long way but it's easier when gravity helps you along. I wore the Helly Hansen Trail Lizards and they worked great on those steep challenges. It was extremely exhausting going from one steep climb to another. I eventually reached the end of a trail that led to a road and I thought I had reached the northern part of Stillwell. After looking at the route I ran via Google Earth I saw that there's more to run if I cross that road but I turned around at that point looking to go southwest and cover other parts yet unexplored.

After a few more steep inclines, carve-outs that were typically the width of one runner or biker, I found myself in the back yard of a large house. I was totally confused because there was nowhere to go except to turn back. I ran a little in the woods behind the house hoping to pick up a trail but I feared I would only pick up Poison Ivy so I made my way back the way I came. In the course of the run a made a couple of stops, each about three minutes. I was very tired from the hills and wilting from the humidity. I re-pointed my direction based on the compass and took off west to complete the circle I thought I was making. I was listening to another Podrunner Podcast (160 BPM) that was usefully innocuous until, at the 40 minute point, there was another repeated phrase that JUST WOULD NOT STOP. I pulled the headphones out of my ears and listened blissfully to the sound of my footfalls for a while.

I eventually came back having navigated around the edge of the open area of the Preserve for a while and when I was done I noted that I'd covered 3.76 miles. The MotionX was way off and from the GPS path view I saw that the signal was lost a few times. So the Garmin 50 wins again. That was a rough 45 minutes and possibly the toughest run I'd ever done in terms of physical exertion. Next week's race course is fairly flat and I'm hoping that this weekend's training on tougher terrain will help condition me to be competitive. AG is running the race as well and this will be the first time we'll compete together. I have no illusions of matching her pace but I'm hoping to achieve a credible time.

Ring around the reservoir

It's a rare day when I completely miss the chance to post. The summer is growing to a close so I only have a few more chances to take off early on "Summer Fridays." That said I'm taking full advantage when I can but it often means a jam-packed morning, a NYC run and then a return to LI. We had lots to do when I arrived home and before I knew it the clock said 10:30 PM and I realized I'd just need to post in the morning.

Yesterday I decided to try the Central Park bridle path on my own. I had never run it alone and although I have a decent sense of direction I still get very confused in Central Park. Running with AG had been my safety net because she knows the park so well and can navigate much better than me. I found the start of the trail and took off. The bridal trail is mostly dirt with some mud and some rough sandy parts. While it's fine to run with regular running shoes it's probably a better surface for trail runners. The mid-day sun was hot and the air was very humid and by the first mile I was feeling a little spent.

The bridle trail affords more shade than the paved routes in the park but the tree cover is intermittent and when the sun is overhead it's brutal. I recognized most of the route from previous runs and felt good about that. When I reached the reservoir I took the east path thinking I would cut south and then head back to my starting point. I didn't realize that the path was actually going north and I was actually rounding the reservoir. Tried to get a bearing on my compass on my iPhone but the glare of the sun made that hard. I finally saw that I had reached the point where I came up to the reservoir and realized I had run around the whole thing. Despite my struggles I was still moving along pretty well and had passed two or three runners and a couple of slower moving cyclists. I followed the west side bridle path back to approximately where I'd started and noted that I'd run a total of 4.4 miles. The MotionX was off, as usual, and by looking at the GPX file on Google Earth (above) you can see how the GPS cuts corners which translates to less distance.

Considering the heat and the mid day timing I was okay with a 9:20/mile average pace. I was extremely sweat-soaked at the end and remained that way all the way to my office despite walking close to ten blocks from the park (through some highly air conditioned buildings no less). The run took a lot out of me and I was fairly tired for the rest of the day. I have a busy day today and I'm trying to figure out when and where I'll run. I should go for long distance as training for next week's 10K trail race but I don't know if my energy level is high enough. It couldn't hurt to try. I still want to explore the northern part of Stillwell that I have not yet run. Maybe that's a good choice for today because the canopy will provide some needed protection from the sun. My experience on the bridle trail gave me some hope that I can navigate through the previously uncharted parts of Stillwell. At least I run there with a compass now. When it comes to the topography of Stillwell Woods, I need all the help I can get.

Letting go of data obsession (a little)

As a coda to yesterday's post I managed to delete this week's run history from my Garmin before I had a chance to upload it to Garmin Connect. I'm disappointed by that but I'm also okay because running has finally become more about the experience than the measurement. A year ago I began to log my activities, first when walking and then when I switched over to running. The act of capturing the data, monitoring improvement and summarizing my monthly mileage became my primary motivation. When my Nike+ Sportband stopped uploading to the Nike+ website I practically panicked because I felt if the run wasn't captured it didn't count. Like it didn't even happen.

I switched from Nike+ to MapMyRun after that and I meticulously transferred information captured on Sportband to this website for a while, until the Nike+ technology failed altogether. Every month I would look at the summary and compare my miles per day/week/month against previous periods. I'd key in my cross training to capture elliptical miles from a paper log I kept next to the machine. I think my focus on the data rather than on the event began to switch when I started running trails more often. Mixing pace times from rugged, hilly runs with flat road runs made monthly pace averages less relevant. I'm still interested in the metrics of each run but I'm satisfied to know that I ran about 20 miles in a week, not that I ran 20.65.

Does this mean that I have transcended the beginner phase of running by focusing metaphorically on the game rather than on the score? Many experienced runners chuckle when I tell them how I capture run data with foot pods and GPS apps. They say they've been doing it so long that they know the distances they run and can pretty much assess their pace as they go. I'm not willing to give up my measurement tools quite yet but I'm willing to live with a few missing sessions on Garmin Connect.